It’s easy to ignore your needs when you hate yourself.
Why would you do all the nice, awesome things for someone you loathe? So you don’t. You know you should, but stay off.
Your mantra is: I will take better care of myself once I love me.
What if we got that backwards?
I ignored my needs for years. I started this habit already in childhood, trying to make my depressed parents feel better. Later, as an adult, I still put everyone before me.
My bosses, my co-workers, my boyfriends.
Everyone came first, and I always last. All it created were toxic relationships, a massive burnout and anxiety and depression.
To get better I attended self-development seminars, read all the books, and did what I thought was necessary to finally love myself. Nothing worked. I still looked in the mirror every morning hating the person that looked back at me.
Then, last year, I fell ill.
The only thing I knew would fix this was me taking radical care of my health. I changed my diet, reduced my working hours, and started to live relaxed and stress-free.
Basically I gave myself what I needed.
Guess what happened? I fell completely and utterly in love with the person that emerged. From this new viewpoint it is easy to maintain the great habits that fuel me and make my life easy.
If you want to love yourself, find out what you need right now.
Maybe it’s a massage, maybe a walk. Maybe it’s just a glass of water. Whatever it is, give it to yourself.
This will manifest the thought «I am a person I care deeply about and I will do whatever it takes to make sure I am ok».
And once this is your truth, loving yourself becomes easy.